I called my friend CT and asked her if she wanted to go to the life drawing session at the Kelowna Rotary Arts Centre. It was great - good model, good group. We really enjoyed it. All my sketch stuff was locked in a storage locker, so it was jump in with watercolour or nothing. It felt a little out of control, tough to get good dark shadows in a hurry, but good fun. This model had the most amazing hair; all kinky and twisty - interesting from any angle. I'll definitely make this group again. Not next weekend however, since we'll be in NEW YORK!! I'm so looking forward to it. Not sure how much sketching will get done since we're there so briefly and have so much we want to see and do. I think i'll call it an 'inspiration' adventure instead.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Kelowna's Dolphins
Finally, after six months of being neck-deep on a work project, I escaped the office and got outside to sketch. Other than doodling on my notepad during conference calls, I haven't drawn a thing. I felt a little rusty at first, but that great brain shift feeling (the reason for sketching in the first place) was waiting there to welcome me back. My job will be winding up in a couple of weeks, and I'm so looking forward to just sketching and writing. Yay. Oh, and of course taking on coaching clients again.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Donny's house
Spent the bulk of the week in Vancouver at Donny's house. This kitchen is one of my favorite places in the world to hang out. Brother Greg flew down, I picked Austin up from university, and we all had a good family bonding session, making battered fish and chips with the cod and halibut Donny and the kids caught on their last trip. It was funny to look at Donny's three kids, all at that age where they think their siblings are a cross to bear, and know that 20, 30 years from now there will be no one they'd rather have dinner with.
I drove out to Richmond to pick Greg up after he landed. Why oh why are there no street signs in Richmond? It's like a concentrated planning effort to keep people lost when they go there. Add to that the sky train construction and what should have been a 20 minute drive turned into and endless circling, trying to hone in on a target. I found it funny that, after I waved to a car in the next lane to ask if I'd passed Westminster Highway (for the third time, seriously) the next car that drove past me waved my window down and asked me the exact same question! A request to the City of Richmond: signs, please. You'd reduce your traffic by at least 50% because people wouldn't have to do all these extra loops trying to figure out where they are.
That's all.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Fibonacci's Roastery & Cafe
We spent the weekend in lovely Nelson BC, weaving our way through their hilly streets, looking at the beautiful, funky houses built into the slope, eating at fantastic restaurants (Red Fish and Max and Irma's Kitchen were two of our favourites).
Tonight is Italian Night with the girls. I just found out that because it's at my house I don't have to do a thing except open my door. Gotta like that! I thought I'd be spending the day cooking, but now I'll spend it working on some vintage watercolours of Kelowna instead. They're all sketched, just waiting for some colour washes. I'm doing them from old sepia museum photos, but I think I'll add a hint of colour.
I popped into Fibonacci's this morning, mostly for breakfast, but also because i've been wanting to paint this beautiful machine, and I knew sitting and sketchbooking would make me feel good. It did. They were playing a recording of Carrie Catherine's performance there last week, which we were at. She's a great songwriter, wonderful story teller, and has an easy, graceful bluesy style.
Being in Nelson this weekend, I got this idea that it'd been cool to do some more sketchbook trips, but make an accompanying video, sort of a travelogue type of thing. I feel a new adventure coming on!
Now on to those watercolour washes.
Tonight is Italian Night with the girls. I just found out that because it's at my house I don't have to do a thing except open my door. Gotta like that! I thought I'd be spending the day cooking, but now I'll spend it working on some vintage watercolours of Kelowna instead. They're all sketched, just waiting for some colour washes. I'm doing them from old sepia museum photos, but I think I'll add a hint of colour.
I popped into Fibonacci's this morning, mostly for breakfast, but also because i've been wanting to paint this beautiful machine, and I knew sitting and sketchbooking would make me feel good. It did. They were playing a recording of Carrie Catherine's performance there last week, which we were at. She's a great songwriter, wonderful story teller, and has an easy, graceful bluesy style.
Being in Nelson this weekend, I got this idea that it'd been cool to do some more sketchbook trips, but make an accompanying video, sort of a travelogue type of thing. I feel a new adventure coming on!
Now on to those watercolour washes.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
From Sketchbook to Canvas
What to do on a snowy day in the Okanagan? Paint the beach in Vallarta, of course. This is painted from a sketch in my sketchbook. It's looking back from the round about at the beach in front of Olas Altas. I so remember this day, perched on a ledge, absorbed in what I was doing. I ended up being inundated with kids from a big Mexican family. They had a million questions (and statements, as kids usually do!) about art and painting and colours and the like. Very fun.
I look out my windows here in the house and see our little forest all covered in snow. It's still falling, and it's piling up nicely on the tops of each branch. Round about now I start to go squirrelly for some heat and sun. Time to hide the passport and credit card on myself.
Last weekend (or was it the weekend before) I took a couple of large canvi up to Apex and did my first two big acrylics from the sketchbook. I like working this way; it keeps me from getting all factual, like I would working from a photo, and keeps the colours more sketchbook-y. Fun.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Apex Musings
I wanted to try capturing the light and colours out our window at night. When I started this background was all one big sheet of fog. As soon as I'd sketched the buildings it lifted to reveal this complex but very interesting pattern of shadow and texture.
There was a time when I painted exclusively from photos. I thought people who painted from real life were crazy, that you'd never get a good end result because the light and atmosphere kept changing, things moved or went away. Now I find that's exactly what I love about working 'plein aire'. I look at some of the sketches I've done over the last year, and the reference photo's I've taken just as I'm about to leave the scene, in case I want to make adjustments later. The photos never really show the good stuff. Perspectives may not be perfect, and it's more challenging to judge what's going on with angles and colour relationships when they're not flattened into a convenient two dimensions for us, but there's more freedom to interpret, to respond to what's there. I love it! It's so much more about the experience of doing it than it is about the result.
I painted this curled up in a corner table by the window of Fresh Tracks Cafe and Bistro while Greg hung out with his friend James and daughter Ashley. I keep intending to paint something simple, like the snow on the roof here, and then get caught up in all the other details in the scene. Oh well, it's all fun. I nursed a single Chai Latte through this whole sketch and almost but never dipped my brush in it once! I must have been deeply absorbed in what I was doing, because Greg popped in twice while I was here and we didn't even see each other.
Weekends up here are so relaxing. It's a half hour from our house in town, but a world away. I'm no longer drawn to shredding up the hill (my last venture there ended in an ambulance ride and a Christmas spent immobilized and stoned on painkillers last year) and love to just kick back, watch movies, have hot tubs, walk the dog. We talk and plan, cook, eat, dream, all the good stuff. When we get back to town we feel like we've had a break. Greg actually pulled the 'For Sale' sign off the side of the condo this weekend.
Now we're back in town. I have a presentation and a speech to write and we've got a host of 'must do's' beckoning. As we drove home we realized that there's not one evening this week when at least one of us isn't obligated to be somewhere. On the highlight side, there's a reception I have to attend for an award I've been nominated for (best home based business of the year - business excellence awards) tomorrow night. The busier we get, the stronger my desire to take March off and go hang out in Mexico for a month gets. Ha! An email just popped into my inbox from my friend Marcela in Mexico as I was typing that sentence. Coincidence? I think not. I love that stuff.
There was a time when I painted exclusively from photos. I thought people who painted from real life were crazy, that you'd never get a good end result because the light and atmosphere kept changing, things moved or went away. Now I find that's exactly what I love about working 'plein aire'. I look at some of the sketches I've done over the last year, and the reference photo's I've taken just as I'm about to leave the scene, in case I want to make adjustments later. The photos never really show the good stuff. Perspectives may not be perfect, and it's more challenging to judge what's going on with angles and colour relationships when they're not flattened into a convenient two dimensions for us, but there's more freedom to interpret, to respond to what's there. I love it! It's so much more about the experience of doing it than it is about the result.
I painted this curled up in a corner table by the window of Fresh Tracks Cafe and Bistro while Greg hung out with his friend James and daughter Ashley. I keep intending to paint something simple, like the snow on the roof here, and then get caught up in all the other details in the scene. Oh well, it's all fun. I nursed a single Chai Latte through this whole sketch and almost but never dipped my brush in it once! I must have been deeply absorbed in what I was doing, because Greg popped in twice while I was here and we didn't even see each other.
Weekends up here are so relaxing. It's a half hour from our house in town, but a world away. I'm no longer drawn to shredding up the hill (my last venture there ended in an ambulance ride and a Christmas spent immobilized and stoned on painkillers last year) and love to just kick back, watch movies, have hot tubs, walk the dog. We talk and plan, cook, eat, dream, all the good stuff. When we get back to town we feel like we've had a break. Greg actually pulled the 'For Sale' sign off the side of the condo this weekend.
Now we're back in town. I have a presentation and a speech to write and we've got a host of 'must do's' beckoning. As we drove home we realized that there's not one evening this week when at least one of us isn't obligated to be somewhere. On the highlight side, there's a reception I have to attend for an award I've been nominated for (best home based business of the year - business excellence awards) tomorrow night. The busier we get, the stronger my desire to take March off and go hang out in Mexico for a month gets. Ha! An email just popped into my inbox from my friend Marcela in Mexico as I was typing that sentence. Coincidence? I think not. I love that stuff.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Double Whammy
How’s this for timing. We finally stayed home for an evening and watched Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Wow. And then, as our heads were whirling with what we’d learned, we turned off the dvd player to see Greenland falling into the sea yet again on David Suzuki’s ‘Arctic Mission’ on the Knowledge Network. It was like the TV Gods were orchestrating themselves to send us a message.
And then, to top it all off, when the news came on one of the lead stories was the Indian auto innovation, the Nano, that will have a kabillion more people on the roads contributing to our emissions situation. I have to admit for about 13 seconds I thought the Nano was a great thing. “Replace all the SUV’s with the cool little affordable low emission things and we’ll save the planet”. Nope. It’s “keep the SUV’s and add all the people currently walking to the carbon stew”.
The thing that shocked me the most? That currently it’s primarily North America making this mess. I really thought that with their huge populations, India, China and a host of other countries were doing things we couldn’t possibly compensate for by changing our lifestyles. Wrong. We keep doing what we’re doing in spite of our knowledge, and now these massive populations are following us down the same road. And why wouldn’t they. What will it take to start creating change? My hat is off to Misters Suzuki and Gore. And shame on all the people in positions of power and influence who look straight at the facts and then look away and pretend they didn’t see it.
It’s all overwhelming. What to do? When I feel like this, I like to drive around in my big ol’ SUV and just think. I always think best when I’m driving.
Looks like I’m going to have to come up with an alternative.
And then, to top it all off, when the news came on one of the lead stories was the Indian auto innovation, the Nano, that will have a kabillion more people on the roads contributing to our emissions situation. I have to admit for about 13 seconds I thought the Nano was a great thing. “Replace all the SUV’s with the cool little affordable low emission things and we’ll save the planet”. Nope. It’s “keep the SUV’s and add all the people currently walking to the carbon stew”.
The thing that shocked me the most? That currently it’s primarily North America making this mess. I really thought that with their huge populations, India, China and a host of other countries were doing things we couldn’t possibly compensate for by changing our lifestyles. Wrong. We keep doing what we’re doing in spite of our knowledge, and now these massive populations are following us down the same road. And why wouldn’t they. What will it take to start creating change? My hat is off to Misters Suzuki and Gore. And shame on all the people in positions of power and influence who look straight at the facts and then look away and pretend they didn’t see it.
It’s all overwhelming. What to do? When I feel like this, I like to drive around in my big ol’ SUV and just think. I always think best when I’m driving.
Looks like I’m going to have to come up with an alternative.
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